Scammer Flips Free Kitties For Profit

A Park Slope woman who gave away her kittens on Craigslist was later shocked and aghast – a common affliction among Park Slope residents – to see the buyer posting an ad trying to sell the very same kittens, even though her ad said that if the buyer wasn’t going to keep the kittens themselves, they were to return them to her. Turns out the woman she gave them to is a serial “cat flipper.”

These are folks scoop up “free to a good home” cats posted on classified sections and then turn around and sell them for a profit.

When confronted, the buyer wrote the seller back, “I just decide to find them homes…You still gave them away to me for free, no contract, once in my hand their [sic] initially mines. That means if I wanted to give them to my nieces, stranger walking the street, dad, or grandmother thats initially on me. … I’m not gonna sit here going back and fourth with you, then get excited and have an asthma attack.”

Rescue organizations recommend charging an adoption fee to deter cat flippers and to have an adoption agreement in writing.

Yeah I have heard of them doing that, but it also seams like it would be hard to track. I mean I could just say my cat has a different name get a new tag and as long as the cat isn’t chipped just go by a different name Isn’t that right boots I mean mittens? And as far as I have heard rescue agencies do not go through the cost and bother of chipping animals.

I don’t see how this is a scam. The seller has found a low-price source for his goods, people who willingly give up their cats for free. If he can find a family willing to give the cat a good home and willing to pay for it, I still don’t see the issue. It’s not like he’s making cat tacos out of them or anything. Or marinating them in the back of his car for being “selfish and greedy.”

It’s loosely a scam, because the flipper lied about their intentions when they adopted the kittens to begin with. It’s like taking freecycled items and reselling them for a profit: you’ve taken the items away from someone who could have used them when free but not when attached to a price tag. The flipper is still taking advantage of someone.

If, against all odds, I were to have a litter of kittens or puppies or whatever to find homes for, I would draft a contract/agreement that would specify several things:

(1) The animals(s) are not for resale. If they are given to other people, it must be as GIFTS.
(2) This same agreement must exist for all future transfers of the animal(s)
(3) The animal(s), when old enough, will be spayed/neutered by a veterinarian (I might be able to help with the expense, through an arrangement with my own vet.)
(4) In the event the animal(s) can no longer be cared for, and a new home cannot be found, they are to be returned to me.

What? It’s entirely enforceable through any small claims court I’ve heard of. You could enforce a contract like that for any property- a television for instance. Their is an acceptable remedy in the contract- the return of the animal to the first owner. You’d want more ideal contract language- but there’s nothing I can think of that would prevent such a contract from being enforced. There’s nothing illegal about it.

Indeed, definitely I’d want better wording for any actual contract. Those were just the provisions I’d want the contract to secure, expressed casually, for the purpose of discussing the idea in general.

I’d probably also charge an adoption fee, and make it refundable upon proof of the animal being spayed/neutered by a licensed veterinarian (within two years of transfer). Most vets will happily furnish adequate proof of this; the local Humane Society has the same sort of program for un-spayed, un-neutered animals (like puppies or kittens) – we got our current two cats from there, as teeny tiny kittens.

The first lady has no reason to be mad. If she wanted to make money off of the kittens she could have. Once she gave them away she has no basis to complain.

Clearly, you’ve never been much of an animal lover.

Also clearly, you’re not the sort of person I’d place an animal with.

It’s not about “the first woman could have made the money and chose not to”. It’s about, the second woman adopted those kittens under false pretenses. And her true motives call into question just how good the care those kittens are receiving, really is. Which leaves the first woman worried about what might happen to the kittens. A worry that would not exist, if the adopter hadn’t intended to resell them all along.

If you assume the cat-flipper will sell the cats to a bad home, YOU gave your cats away to a bad home. You’re no better at finding a good home for your cats than a cat-flipper is. The cat flipper, through random chance, might actually do a better job than you.

If you are truly concerned about the welfare of an unwanted pet, it wouldn’t be unwanted in the first place. In this case, it appears OP likes cute little kittens just fine but does not want them enough to keep them as adult cats.

inb4 “u dont no her situation!!”– I don’t have to. It’s very easy to keep dicks out of your ovulating female animals if you truly want to.

Really? You think he’s doing background checks on the adopters, making sure their landlord actually allows pets, taking care of spay/neuters and first-round vaccines? She was a moron for giving the cats away, yes, but if he’s selling single kittens to people who “want a pet for their incredibly young child” or something that would be a warning flag to anyone at a shelter with half a brain…
Scam or not is immaterial. If you think animals are property like any other property, that would be the way to phrase things. I’m just thinking of the lovely lesson she would’ve learned had the cats been scooped up by someone using them as dog-fighting bait. Seriously, she didn’t think anything was going on when someone offers to take all your kittens off your hands?

I don’t think she should be praised as “doing extra work to find them homes” if she got the kittens from other CL ads, stopping those people from initially placing their kittens for free in a loving home. Her priority is clearly the money, and not the animal (otherwise she would not have intercepted all these free kittens trying to find good homes and instead would have let them go to said good homes in the first place.)

By the flipper’s own attitude, it doesn’t appear that this is some unsung hero situation. “they’re my cats now i can do whatever i want even give them to strangers on the street because you gave them to me for free hahaha” (paraphrased but that’s the gist of the quote to me) does not sound like a person who is doing this for the sake of the kittens.

I got my cat on CL. Paid a $10 rehoming fee, the lady got a little teary when she brought the kitten, and she helped me make sure my home was kitten-proof. It was a positive experience, and for the time/effort/care the lady put into finding my home, vetting it, and delivering to me a well-fed and -adjusted cat, the $10 would not have turned a profit. I shudder to think how little effort a person would put into caring for cats and placing them to turn a profit on CL.

WRONG! I just had a convo with a breeder a while ago and I used my supreme logic to ram his head up his ass.

If you do not care about the animals, you should not treat them like objects. These people are looking at animals as money and in the meanwhile when they have them, they don’t feed them at all or very little so they can have a low “adoption fee” of 50 dollars and trick people into thinking they are just looking to recoup the cost of food and it is impossible to tell otherwise.

This is unethical, wrong, and I know that soon, people will need a license to own a dog or cat. That is the right thing to do to stop abuse of animals. Couple that with a breeding ban and we have a better world for everyone.

But that’s the problem isn’t it? There’s no reason to believe the flipper is looking for a “good” home for the kittens. The mere fact that she is a “flipper” and had “several postings” selling different cats indicates that she’s not bothering to screen buyers and is just handing these kittens off to the first person with the cash.

This woman’s concern isn’t about money. She’s not mad that the flipper is making money off of the kittens. What she cares about is ensuring that these kittens find a good home where they will be cared for.

kitten. because then you can submit adorable pictures of it to the consumerist flickr pool and people will ooooh and aaaaah over your kitten when it’s the header for top posts of the week/open thread.
also kittens are cuddlier.

It is (sort of) if that’s the condition they were in when they were adopted. Sometimes when I look too closely at the rug my two managed to deface beyond recognition, I kinda sorta kinda drift off into a fantasy where I go to the shelter to adopt and lo and behold they happen to have two kitties who were cruelly declawed by their previous owner.

Psh. The reason apartments/rental units have carpets in the first place is because they are *meant* to be replaced after every few tenants due to simple wear-and-tear. It is apparently cheaper to replace carpets than it is to repair badly-neglected hardwood flooring.

Though it is true, cats are murder on carpets, even if they never harf somewhere or “miss” their litter box. I have owned three cats, each separated by more than a year, who had an alarming tendency to tear up the carpet from underneath doors, trying to “dig” their way into a closed room.

A lot. They can’t trust everyone who walks through the door and you might be normal at first but if you let your cat go nuts, the apartment complex would have to spend a lot of money to replace carpet, patch walls, etc.

If you’re a good tenet, ask nicely. I had my fee waived without my even asking. I walked in to do some business, told them I got a new cat and asked whether that meant I needed to do something. They said there was a $300 fee, but that in my case they didn’t care.

Cat flippers piss me off because they created a kitten bubble. These flippers come in, trying to make a quick buck, then next thing you know there are a bunch of foreclosed kittens in the neighborhood dragging down the value of my kitten.

Why do you care? People who didn’t want the animals essentially unloaded them off on someone who will feed them and take care of them until they can find someone willing to buy them.

There is nothing wrong here. In fact this is essentially a service a shelter would charge you for. If you gave your cats to a shelter they would want money from you and then they would turn around and demand money from the adopters as well.

The real question is: why do YOU care and why can’t YOU get over it? It’s clear this subject has gotten you very worked up and you feel the need to respond to a bunch of posts in this thread indicating as such.

Assumes facts not in evidence. I have seen people have to give up their much-beloved cat or dog because they had to move, and the new place wouldn’t let them have pets. In fact, one of MY cats was adopted from a friend under exactly those circumstances.

There is nothing wrong here. In fact this is essentially a service a shelter would charge you for.

What is wrong, is that this “Unique” woman lied to the original owner. A shelter would not lie.

If you gave your cats to a shelter they would want money from you and then they would turn around and demand money from the adopters as well.

Wrong. You can bring a cat to a shelter, and they will take it – no money required. Perhaps you are confusing kennels and catteries, with shelters …?

It’s a scam because the flippers often have some convincing story about how they’re going to keep it as their personal pet, even though they have no intention of doing so. Some people do whatever they can to make sure their pet’s going to a good home and will receive proper care, and the flippers often promise this in order to get the free critter, even though they have no intention of keeping it. They often post it right back on craigslist with a $400 “rehoming fee” claiming that they don’t have time for it anymore so they’re doing “what’s right for the animal” and also it’s a purebred show dog/cat but, gee, I just can’t find the papers anywhere and that’s why it’s “only” $400 even though it’s worth sooo much more.

When I worked for a shelter, I believe we invested a minimum of $300 in each animal brought in (standard health tests including FIV, Spay/Neuter services, microchipping, etc). If the animal was adopted the very next day for $80, we lost $220 on that cat. If the cat is with us longer, the bills for food, litter, medical care, etc, increase. I can assure you, no shelter is making a profit.

And they love competition. Every cat that finds a home without the help of the shelter is one more cat that the shelter can save that wouldn’t otherwise be saved.

I suspect that this woman takes the kittens and then sells them immediately. Once the kitten is about 6 months old, they become much more difficult to find homes for because the insane cute factor is gone. What does she do with the cats that she can’t find a buyer for? Yeah, getting dumped somewhere.

She wasn’t looking for someone to sell the kittens for her. She was perfectly fine trying to find a good home for the kittens herself. I think the fact that she clearly stated that she wanted the kittens back if the buyer ended up changing their mind shows that she was willing to keep the kittens for as long as it took her to find them a good home.

You act is if this “Unique” woman was doing her a favor. She’s not. Who knows if she’s looking for a “good” home for these kittens or if she’s just dumping them on the first person who’ll give her the $50. She may be selling them off to animal testing facilities for all we know.

The flipper lied to the first woman, in order to convince her to part with the cats. The flippr presented herself as someone who wanted pets, who wanted the kittens for herself.

And she didn’t. She never had the tiniest faintest glimmer of a shred of any such intent. She intended, all along, to sell them – and didn’t come right out and say “Hey, you know, I sell cats. I could take these guys off your hands, give them good care, and sell them to someone. You can stop paying for them, I can make a profit, and these little guys still get great homes. What do you say?”

This is one of many reasons why “pets free to a good home” is a bad idea. There are people who want to sell them for a profit; people who feed the puppies and kittens to other animals, like large snakes; people who sell the puppies and kittens to labs to be experimented upon; etc.

My recommendation is that, if you find yourself with unwanted pets, give them to a no-kill animal shelter or rescue organization, then get your cat or dog spayed. If you’re low on money, there are plenty of organizations who will spay or neuter your pet for a low cost. Heck, my county’s animal control department will spay or neuter the pet of a person on food stamps FOR FREE! Just Google “low cost neutering”.

I thought the same thing. The first thing I learned about getting rid of baby pets was to always charge a fee (this usually attracts honest, good potential owners, and the fee can be dropped if you feel sure the situation is safe for the kitten or puppy). I know some people pick out puppies and kittens to use in the training of hunting dogs.

Whaa….? What kind of hunting dogs are we talking about here? What is the proposed game these dogs will be hunting? What is the proposed benefit of including a puppy or kitten in this training? Perhaps you meant fighting dogs?

I see it happen all the time. Same reason people pay $1000 for a puppy from a pet store that likely came from a puppy mill. They somehow think they’re getting a better animal and flippers often make up a back story that makes the dog/cat seem more valuable…AKC registered but, oops, I can’t find the papers right now…it’s worth $1000, but since I can’t find the papers, I’ll let you have it for $400 (what a deal!)…the parents are champion show dogs, you can stud this dog out for a lot of money, etc. There are ads like this on craigslist all the time and, sadly, people buy it.

Well, if you really want to hit her where it hurts, call the cops. If she’s doing this a lot, she’s acting as an animal dealer/seller. Most likely, she’d need a license of some sort to do that. Check with your local and state prosecutors.

We should only report the absolute most serious of crimes. Heck, let’s just toss out the law book for misdemeanors. Drunk driving? Who cares! Beat your wife? Why not! Unlicensed pet mills? Can I get a Hell Yeah!

That being said, what’s the problem here? In order for there to be a scam, I’m pretty sure that someone has to be ripped-off. Giving stuff away freely and getting angry that someone else is selling it is not a scam. I’m down with it if the point of the article is “don’t let it happen to you!”, but I don’t think its appropriate to trot out the word scam so much.

Many times my wife and I grabbed “FREE!!!”- stuff from clean outs, curb alerts, people moving away, etc. We just figured on that we had several choices:
trash the items
keep the items
repair or clean or store for resale- yardsale or craigslist or maybe ebay

If the people seemed to be avid craiglist people we might wait sometime before re-listing the item or if we had too much stuff we would pull a fast yardsale to dump at below market prices.

I do realize that most of this does not apply to kittens since they are live pets but the market is free. The give away person should not crank about the receiver reselling them as pets as the kittens could be received and then fed to a snake in some cases…

The issue isn’t that the donor is upset about not being able to make money. The issue is that the flipper lied about her intentions and took advantage of a service intended for people who actually wanted to give a kitten a good home. We have no idea what the flipper actually intends to do with the kittens or how she is treating them.

I think when you give stuff away it should be just that, give them away and mot worry about peoples intentions. Like when people ask me for change for “food” I just give them if I can, if they want to go get drunk or shoot up oh well.

With most freebies, I wouldn’t care so much. However, these are living animals we’re talking about. I’d also be indignant if the donor was giving away food to hungry people and some jackass took a portion just to turn around and sell it.

Another example of why “free to good home” is a bad idea: A 4-H leader in WA was caught taking “free to good home” horses off of Craigslist, and taking them directly to the meat auction. Brought kids out to meet him and told the military guy deploying to Iraq they’d have a “good home”.

And who’s to say the mother-cat wasn’t already pregnant when the OP adopted her …? A cat which is a week or two pregnant, won’t look that different from a cat that isn’t pregnant at all. Especially not to an untrained eye!

Isn’t a person who’s willing to pay for the cat more likely to take better care of it than someone who’d pick it up for free? Except for the “flipper’s” bad attitude and terrible grammar, this seems like a self-solving problem.

So, I read through the entire story on The Brooklyn Paper website, and I still wondered if this was secretly written for The Onion. Are we seriously giving this much attention to a woman who collects free cats and then sells them? It’s not like she’s drowning them in the river. What’s the big deal? If the initial owner was so terribly concerned about the future of these cats, she should have: A. kept them herself, B. gotten her cat fixed so that there weren’t any kittens to worry about in the first place, C. given them to a friend or neighbor so that she could check on them every day.

It’s not a scam, and you should spay/neuter your pets instead of pumping out kittens/puppies you don’t want to keep. I’ve always been told never to give pets away for this and many more reasons. Just stop creating undesired life, though. It’s cruel and pointless.

I want to know how this woman is selling kittens on Craigslist in the first place. You are not allowed to sell animals – those posts get pulled very quickly. You are only allowed to charge a reasonable adoption fee.

“I just decide to find them homes…You still gave them away to me for free, no contract, once in my hand their [sic] initially mines. That means if I wanted to give them to my nieces, stranger walking the street, dad, or grandmother thats initially on me. … I’m not gonna sit here going back and fourth with you, then get excited and have an asthma attack.”

She sounds stupid. I hope she’s reading this right now, getting excited about how I just insulted her. Go get your inhaler, honey, then sign up for some literacy classes.

Sometimes i sell stuff in-game in World of Warcraft, and the person who bought it will turn around and try to get a better price for it.

BFD. I got the price I wanted for whatever I sold. Cat lady got the price she wanted for them (in this case, free). there may be a legality issue with her being a pet dealer and needing a license, as someone else said, but I see nothing legally or ethically wrong with what she’s doing (She”s snarky in her response, but it’d be hard to not be snarky at someone who got butthurt that you sold something that they could have sold but chose to give away instead.)

As long as the “scammer” isn’t treating the kittens bad while in her possession I don’t see a problem.

If the giver awayer (lol don’t know what else to call her) doesn’t want to go through the hassle of actually trying to sell them for money that’s her fault, don’t get mad when someone capitalizes and does no harm to the cats.

Animals can be “fixed” at as little as 3-4 months. Even at as little as 6 weeks! Some vets don’t like to do it this early, but others do. Most animals can come into heat at 6 months. Females are always encouraged to be fixed BEFORE their first heat in order to cut down on the risk of breast cancer in the future.
If you have a vet who won’t do the surgery WAY before the animal is able to become pregnant, you need to find a different vet.

That stuff happens all the time. My neighbor picks up stray dogs and sells them on craigslist.
She’ll buy a dog off craigslist and keep them 2 weeks to a month then sell them for a profit.
Since I’ve known her in the past year she’s had 6 dogs, 1 cat, 1 hamster, a guinea pig, and who knows what else. I stopped socializing with her so I don’t know what she’s done in the last 3 months.

Giving up pets free isn’t a good idea, anyway. There are folks known as “bundlers” that gather up free pets and sell them to laboratories. Always put a price on pets rather than give them away to strangers.

I don’t think the sub really has grounds to complain. She did give them up for free. That means she lost all control over what happens to them afterwards. (FWIW, I’m in rescue myself. We don’t make a profit – We’re lucky if we can break even after vet bills, etc.)

Oh, Dunderbeck, Oh, Dunderbeck! How could you be so mean?
I told you you’d be sorry for inventing that machine.
For all the neighbor’s dogs and cats will never more be seen;
They’ll all be ground to sausage meat in Dunderbeck’s machine!

I don’t see any real difference between what the woman did and others who take “free” calves from a dairy and then re-sell them. Heck, my dad and I have considered doing that (the cows, not kittens). Better those cows get a chance to roam free on the range than be tied up for veal.

It is not a scam. The first owner gave the kittens to the second owners. Despite her orally saying (apparently) she wanted them back if the new owner wasn’t going to keep them, those words are worth the paper they are written on. New owner is free to do what she wants to with her kittens (outside of fraud, animal torture laws etc of course). Next time first owner should try selling the kittens herself.

I sold some kittens my cat had for $5. But if you want to get a kitty at a shelter they charge $80 that is insane. They shouldnt charge more then $20 for kitties that way more people could afford the adoption fee.

I blame the OP. Everybody knows when distributing animals, even if you aren’t after a profit, you must charge some sort off fee to discourage those with less honourable intentions. A good mate of mine breeds rats for the love of it, and the only reason she charges people for them is to ensure they go to good homes and don’t end up as feed. If she knows you personally and is confident that the rats will be loved and taken care of then she will give them away for free, but says the amount of people who get up to shady stuff with animals they get for free just isn’t worth the risk otherwise.